


Sammy Lawrence One-Offs

by EveryAlternateEnding



Series: The "Breaking the Time Loop" canon [2]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Cults, Gen, Goodbyes, Pre-Canon, Self-Discovery, Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:09:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22133827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EveryAlternateEnding/pseuds/EveryAlternateEnding
Summary: Through the eyes of Sammy Lawrence, this fic will explore two concepts.First, it will examine the very beginnings of the sketch dimension, and how the cult of the Ink Demon came to be.Secondly, well, ever wonder what happened to Sammy Lawrence after the events of Breaking the Time Loop?
Relationships: Jack Fain & Sammy Lawrence, Susie Campbell/Sammy Lawrence
Series: The "Breaking the Time Loop" canon [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1593169
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	1. Trapped to Found

Sammy wasn’t sure how long he’d spent huddled in his sanctuary. Days, probably. Maybe weeks. The last thing he remembered before that was running from the monster that had once been Norman Polk. He’d sealed himself up here to protect himself, and shortly afterward, all the colour and texture had faded from everything, leaving a cartoonish world behind. Even his own hands were covered in sketch lines. He had only twice ventured out of his sanctuary. The first time was to take an extremely wishful try at the front door. As Sammy would have assumed, it was locked. The second time was to gather up a cutout of Bendy and as much bacon soup as his arms could carry. During both times he had gone out late at night and made as little noise as he could, in an attempt to avoid everyone. He knew that as of late, rumours had been virulent about Joey Drew and the supposed magic of the ink machine. He knew that he was a part of some of those rumours. Considering that it was true, that they had indeed practiced a fair deal of satanic magic together, somehow Sammy didn’t think he’d be any too beloved in the public eye.

No matter how Sammy tried, he couldn’t seem to figure out what had happened. But Bendy must have had something to do with it. At no time in which he had experimented with satanism alongside Joey Drew had he gotten the impression that either of them was capable of something like this. So it had to be Bendy, a creature he knew to be capable of manipulating ink and that he’d long speculated to be the reason the ink machine was capable of so many impossible things. Maybe this was Bendy’s revenge for imprisoning him. It might have been a long-shot, but Sammy nonetheless found himself speaking to Bendy cutout, knowing that Bendy could hear him. After days of silence, he began to beg it for a response, and then, since what he was speaking to was most likely one of the old Gods that Joey had spoken of, he began to pray to it.

Over the days he’d spent holed up, the screams going on outside his sanctuary had gradually calmed down. One highly muffled call, however, coming seemingly from directly beneath him, was still there. It hadn’t been too obvious while the studio was still noisy, but now it seemed worth a thought. It hadn’t moved in days, so it most likely was trapped. And what could have been directly below him? He was on the bottom floor (although it seemed that the geography of the studio was shifting). The only thing that came to his mind was the sewers.

The sewers! Jack had mentioned hiding in the sewers to get away from the noise of the ink machine.

Sammy got up at once and headed for the sewers, grabbing an axe along the way for protection. The sewers didn’t smell of sewage anymore, only ink. He went past a desk that must have been set up by Jack, or perhaps it was just another example of the studio rearranging itself. The call was getting clearer- he was sure it was Jack’s voice now, and it was definitely a call for help. Finally he came upon Jack. He was laying on his back, his leg caught in the gears of some machinery that looked to be from the ink machine. Sammy dropped the axe and ran to him.

“Sammy. Oh, thank goodness. Please help me out, here.”

“Of course. How?”

“There’s a lever over there. If we’re lucky, it’ll make the gears turn the right way, and this machine will spit my leg out. If we aren’t lucky, well, turn it off quickly and hand me the axe. Alright?”

Sammy agreed, and did as he was asked, looking carefully at the gears as he gently pulled the lever. Thankfully, the gears were attempting to turn the right way, and with Sammy’s help, Jack was able to pull out his leg. It looked thoroughly crushed, but at least it was still attached. According to him, it didn’t even hurt. It was also covered in gooey ink.

“How did this happen?” Sammy asked Jack.

“About the same time that the place went sketchy, the machinery started growing. I went to investigate, but the ground just opened up beneath me, and the next thing I knew, my foot was caught in gears and getting dragged halfway up the wall. Thankfully, it seems like it’s calmed down since. Hasn’t moved at all in days.”

“Days? Oh, Jack. Come back to my sanctuary with me. You must be starving.”

And that’s what they did. Thankfully Jack was still able to walk, albeit with a limp. Once they were safe in the sanctuary and had some bacon soup in their stomachs, Jack finally asked that uncomfortable question: “Sammy, I know you were... messing around... with Mr. Drew. Do you have any idea as to what happened here?” There was no accusation in his voice, but Sammy still felt under attack.

“No. I had nothing to do with all this!” he snapped, before he could stop himself.

“I’m not accusing you. I just know you know about the supernatural. Don’t you have any idea at all?”

“Right. Sorry, Jack. I do have my... ideas, but they’re something I have to work on myself. Anyhow, they probably hate me out there, but you don’t have that problem. You’re better off out there. But let’s at least get the gunk off your foot before you go.”

Jack attempted to claw the ink from his foot, but it was as though it was endless. All his efforts gave him was a clawed-off foot. And no pain. The ink then re-attached itself to his ankle. “S-Sammy? Did you see that?”

In silent shock, Sammy nodded, then knelt down to examine. Digging into the ink was like digging through wet clay, and there was no foot to be found underneath. And Sammy couldn’t shake the sense that the ink _wanted_ , was _trying_ to cling to his hands. Jack’s squirming didn’t help.

“W-what’s happened to me?”

“I don’t know. Jack, does this _thing_ feel like it’s your foot?”

“Yeah. It feels no different. It actually tickled when you dug into it.”

Suddenly, Sammy remembered something. He rolled up his sleeve to an ink stain he’d gotten on his arm a few days ago. It had tripled in size from the playing-card sized splotch it had been, and now covered most of his bicep, almost making a full, glossy loop around it.

Eyes wide, he exclaimed, “We need to wash off this ink!”

It took a good five minutes under the full pressure of the bathroom sink to get the ink off of Sammy’s arm, and once it was off, his bicep was revealed to be shrunken and covered in ugly, dark scar tissue. No wonder it burned so much coming off- it probably would have been a raw red if the world were still in colour. Thankfully, neither he nor Jack had any similar damage to their hands.

“Alright, Jack. Maybe I should tell you my ideas. You see, the ink machine is supernatural, and it’s not just that little thing that we lift up with chains. There’s a much bigger one- the size of a church- in the basement. Joey and I were the only ones who had access to it, and we used it to make supernatural things. And at the very core of the machine, something is trapped. I’ve heard it pounding and scratching at the walls, and Joey denied hearing anything when I pointed it out to him. And Jack, Joey and I had practiced the occult together before, but the things this ink machine let us do were beyond any of that. Towards the end, I even got to communicate with the creature while I was trying to bring Joey down. He calls himself Bendy. He sees through cutouts, and he controls ink,” Sammy examined Jack’s face for signs of disbelief. Thankfully there weren’t any yet. “I know that sounds crazy. And I’m about to say something crazier. Are you ready? I think that Joey Drew imprisoned one of the old gods we used to pray to. Enslaved it so we could do supernatural things with the ink machine. And all this is just a sign of it having full control of its powers again. Through this cutout in my sanctuary, I’ve been begging it to let me go. Jack, if we get it on our side, maybe it’ll let us out. At least, maybe it’ll keep the ink from hurting us.”

By now, Jack was staring at Sammy like he’d sprouted a second head. “Come again?”

“I know that sounds crazy, but so is all of this. The only way out is to please the ink demon.”

“Okay. Well, if that’s the case, we need to tell everyone. Even if that’s not the case, we at least need to tell everyone not to let the ink eat them.”

“I don’t think so, Jack. People are going to be mad at me, and-“

A familiar roar emanated from the walls. The projectionist’s roar. The two scampered out of the bathroom so not to become cornered and found themselves nearly face-to-face with the monster. “Run!” Sammy screamed, before he beginning to tear down the hall. Looking back, he could tell that Jack, limping on his ink foot, was doomed unless something was done. Sammy threw his axe, and in a stroke of sheer luck, it landed in the middle of the projectionist’s head. The projectionist wobbled backward, stunned. Jack tore the axe from the creature’s head, in an act of extreme cleverness or extreme stupidity, threw it as hard as he could down the hall. The projectionist turned away from to investigate the sound. At the other end of the hall was a little miracle station. It could barely fit the both of them, but this was a matter of survival. They watched the projectionist idly wander past and stayed in the station for several minutes afterward.

“You see?” Sammy said. “At least in my sanctuary, we’ll be safe.”

Jack looked down at the ground and sighed. “I guess you’re right. But did you see those people we passed on the way to the bathroom?” 

Sammy had, out of the corner of his eye, and then sped up in case they were angry.

“One of them had ink covering half her face, and she looked terrified. And I know you’re the type of person who could live in the same thirty square feet without going stir crazy, but I’m not. I’m going to look for people, and tell them what you told me. Of course, they have no reason to believe me, but... well, you’ll be able to say ‘I told you so’ when I come crawling back to you, I guess.”

“Okay. I understand. Well, best of luck out there, Jack. My sanctuary is always open.”

With that, they split ways. On his way back to his sanctuary, Sammy passed by a woman who was collecting bacon soup from a shelf. She turned to reveal that half of her beautiful face covered with a thick layer of ink. Surely, if she didn’t act immediately, she would be disfigured for life.

“Hey,” he called out to her. “You need to wash that off!”

She mumbled something Sammy couldn’t make out. He went over to her.

“What did you say?”

“I already tried that.”

“Well, you’d better try it again,” he grumbled, rolling up his sleeve to show his damaged arm. “You see this? Three days of ink damage. Getting it off hurt, but you’d better do it unless you want your face to look like my arm.”

The girl mumbled an “Okay,” then hurried off like a scared rabbit. After giving a moment’s thought to going after her, Sammy left for his sanctuary. Truly, he was not patient enough for this, let alone convincing hundreds of jaded employees to worship a cartoonish demon.

Days passed, forcing Sammy to realize that his pleads to Bendy weren’t doing anything. The boredom was also driving him mad. One trip, he decided. To head down to the ink machine, try to break Bendy out. If that didn’t work, he’d be right back.

Getting down to the giant ink machine proved more difficult than Sammy expected. Before the sealing of the studio, it would have been easy to get to the elevator and take it down to the very basement, where he’d have to use the key Joey had given him in to unlock the massive machine. Now, the building’s new configuration had him going in circles a dozen times before he found it. When he stepped on, the cage slammed shut and he heard a familiar female voice from the speakers. “Hmm... who do we have here? Sammy Lawrence... I have no use for you yet. Very well, I’ll let you pass. This time.” It sounded just like Susie Campbell had after her transformation, and she sounded malicious.

“Uh, thanks,” Sammy said stupidly. “Bottom floor please?”

The elevator cranked into motion, but it landed long before the ink machine.

“Bottom floor,” Sammy repeated, “As in, as far down as it goes.”

“This is it. Don’t make me change my mind.”

The second Sammy had stepped off, the elevator rose again. There was solid floor under it.

“Oh, did I mention that there’s no stairway back up?” Alice plucked. “Oh well. You knew what was best for me, so I’m sure you can take care of yourself.”

Sammy cursed the shifting studio under his breath. Hopefully, he’d be able to break Bendy out. Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to beg his ex-girlfriend and murder victim for a ride back. But at this point, what could make this day any worse?

As it turned out, lots of things. The studio (lord, he was referring to it like it was alive) seemed intent on proving as much. His journey started off simply enough, although he had to smack his way through a set of butcher gang members just to clear the first hallway. After that, Sammy began to run into one emotionally draining situation after another. First, Grant Cohen’s office, whose walls had been coated with money-related gibberish messages that the man had left the day before his disappearance. Second, an audio log left by Susie Campbell detailing her feelings of anger and betrayal by Joey Drew. _That_ had been the mindset she was in when she’d agreed to become Alice Angel. Sammy left the audio log. Best to put it out of his mind, even though the studio was beginning to feel like a museum of all the twisted events that had occurred there. Yet he couldn’t seem to find a staircase down to the cause of so many of them. 

Finally, Sammy wandered into Bendyland and came upon a horrid sight: the giant, severed head of Bertrum Piedmont, resting in an octopus ride. It was cocked to its side, unwilling to do more than stare at him listlessly. Sammy hadn’t known Bertrum at all, but with the resignation written all over his face and the immobile state of his body, Sammy couldn’t help but feel bad for him. 

Sammy was about to say something to him when he heard the familiar cackling of the Butcher Gang. Acting of sheer instinct, Sammy ran and hid under a bench. Even curled up and facing away as he was, Sammy could tell that carnage was occurring from sound alone as the chatter turned to angry grunts. At the same time, ominous theme park music began to play.

“Enough! Get away!” A booming British voice yelled through the speakers. Sammy peeked out. The piper was striking at Bertrum’s face, leaving cuts that resembled ink smears. Bertrum swung at them, hitting his own side and smushing the fisher. Meanwhile, the striker attempted to hit his mouth, only to have his front leg bitten off with a sickening snap.

Sammy fought the urge to vomit, and prayed to the forces that be that Bendy would let him out of here. Bertrum smacked down his arm and narrowly missed the fleeing piper and striker, crushing instead Sammy’s abandoned axe. For whatever reason, that was the final straw. Sammy laid back down behind the bench and stayed down, even as the carnival music stopped and the chatter of the two butcher gang members faded.

A couple minutes later, he heard a voice. “Hey. Are you okay?”

He looked up to see two entirely normal-looking human beings, a man and a woman.

“Why don’t you come with us? I don’t think we’ve seen you in the village before.”

Sammy went with them. They asked what he was doing in such a dangerous area. Sammy said that he’d tell them when they got to their destination, as it was best to be on guard now. The duo unlocked a door, which led to a room with a massive hole in the floor. They climbed down into the pit with rope, and came upon what Sammy knew they must have been calling “the village”.

It wasn’t much, at the time, but it was still evidence that the people here had come together and were making the best of things. The area was bordered on two sides by walls, by an ink river on another, and the final side was blocked off by a massive wooden fence that they must have built themselves, providing full protection, Sammy’s guide explained, from ink creatures. A man in a GENT uniform was building a structure of some sort over an area where a large amount of cots had been gathered. Other supplies had been gathered, too, such as bacon soup, rope, and even a few axes. The area even contained a bathroom, which would allow for any members of the area to quickly wash off the corrosive ink. That must have been why the members of this community were so undamaged.

After their little tour, the Sammy’s guides again asked for his story. Sammy hadn’t been able to think up a better plan, so he told them everything. 

To Sammy’s relief and disbelief, they believed every word of it, and were happy to hear that _someone, anyone,_ had a clue about the supernatural forces at play and how to escape them. That night, Sammy was given a platform to tell the whole village about his theory. The next day, a group of scouts were sent out alongside Sammy to find the giant ink machine. The day every axe was in the arms of a strong man, and Sammy led them down to free the ink demon. After hours of pounding at the metal wall yielded nary a scratch against it and two fewer precious axes to defend themselves with, they gave up. Sammy found himself desperate to embolden the crew. He pleaded to a cutout for a sign, and one was given: the words, “I can free you,” appeared on a wall, written in ink.

The group of men had come down to this place thinking of the ink demon as a concrete solution to their problems. They came up as Bendy’s disciples, thinking him a God. And Sammy, their resident expert on the occult, was their advisor on how to please the beast. They began worshipping him, Sammy teaching them how, and even built a church in which to do it. Was it hard on irritable old Sammy Lawrence? A bit. As a priest, he had to really restrain himself from snapping in order to keep the appropriate aura of serenity and terror, and he didn’t always succeed, especially at first. Although he was enjoying the power and prestige that came with priesthood, and his abilities as a leader grew by the day.

—

Years wore on.

The village’s numbers grew as the scouts continued to bring back stranded people. To Sammy’s delight, Jack had been found only a week after he had.

Sammy’s methods of pleasing the ink demon became more drastic, including ritual dances and the sacrifice of butcher gang members. Eventually, they resorted to human sacrifice and even, on one occasion, ritual cannibalism.

The bodies of the villagers deteriorated. Whenever one was killed by an ink creature or for ritual purposes, they would come back from a puddle or the ink machine, covered in irremovable ink. To Sammy, they looked an unfortunate amount like the ink person that he and Joey had first experimented on. There was no human body there, Sammy knew. Just a soul attached to the ink machine. Even among those that were not killed, the ink gradually became impossible to wash off. Rather than face gradual decay, a thought that terrified him, Sammy proposed that they try sacrificing him.

Their minds were decaying, too. For a while they were all losing themselves in each other, until it was discovered that souls could be separated out using audio logs. When Sammy was separated, his primary mission became making sure that the rest of his cult could do the same. And in addition to keeping them separate, he had to keep them sane and hopeful, all while feeling none too sane himself. He had no more ideas as to what they could be doing differently to please the ink demon. It was just a matter of waiting. Telling everyone that someday, something would change, a new opportunity would present itself, and they had to be ready to take it.


	2. Moving On

For twenty three years, Sammy Lawrence had longed for everything he had now. Freedom. His old body. The whole, open, colourful world for him to live in. Even his relationship with Susie Campbell had been given back to him. In his daydreams, Sammy had fantasized about publishing the music he’d written in his years of captivity, becoming involved with a church, marrying, and never coming back to that horrible studio or performing demonic arts again.

Less had changed than he expected. Until he was finally free, he had never realized just how attached he was to the churches he already had within the studio, and the people he’d helped there. And so, every day after work, he’d head into the sketch dimension. The portal to it had found a new home in the closet in the bathroom of his brother’s apartment, where he and Susie were staying until they found their own place to stay. Joey had been perfectly willing to help him move it: there was no more closure to be had from the sketch dimension, and a part of Joey was honestly just happy that someone from the dimension was moving on and helping to salvage the souls of the damned.

Within the dimension, Alice Angel was hard at work sending the souls of Sammy’s cult to heaven. A necessary part of that was separating a soul from the hive mind that lost one’s tended to become when left unattended.

There was nothing functionally wrong with separating them out as needed like Alice was doing. The souls, spread out across dozens of bodies, simply wouldn’t be aware of themselves. A few of them, Sammy knew, had never even attempted to separate due to what could only be described as a very weak will to live. The only problem was that Sammy didn’t like seeing his people melt away into a languid hive. That was why he reopened the Church of Unity and returned to it whenever necessary, playing audio logs for anyone who had forgotten who they were.

There was a good deal less to do at the Church of Unity now that Alice was at work- nothing helps one’s will to live like not being hunted by a demon and the concrete promise of escape. And of course, now that Bendy had given life back to every person he could, the Church of the Ink Demon was permanently closed. The only other “work” he had as a pastor was in encouraging the occasional lost one who was afraid to give himself over to Alice. As a result, Sammy had a lot of time to spend hanging out with the important people in his life. He and Jack were still best friends, and would Sammy often played music with him. Jack also joined Sammy, Tom, and Alice for games of cards. He generally wouldn’t leave the sketch dimension until ten or eleven at night, when his body’s need for sleep forced him to.

At first, Susie stayed up for him. Though, his social batteries were usually drained by that point, so he typically just showered off and went to bed after that, careful to remove every drop of ink from himself and the floor. Susie hated seeing ink in any quantity greater than what would come out of a pen, and she hated when Sammy talked about what was going on in the sketch dimension. Thing was, that was pretty much Sammy’s whole life. Eventually, she stopped staying up for him, making him agree to have dinner with her and his brother each night before disappearing into the sketch dimension instead.

Over dinners, he mostly let Susie talk. She’d always been the type to enjoy talking about her day and the like. As of late, she’d been talking about new technologies and other little things that had changed between the forties and the sixties that she wanted Sammy to see. His response was always the same: “we’ll do it on the weekend.” As of late, she’d been doing a lot of complaining about him not becoming more involved in “the real world.”

Sammy hated that. The people of his cult were real. Real and important to him. If Susie didn’t want to listen to why that was (and she didn’t. She didn’t want to hear a word about the sketch dimension) she’d just have to accept it blind.

Despite some bitterness towards her, Sammy did feel bad about neglecting to make a life outside the sketch dimension, especially as Susie began to lose interest in him. And that wasn’t the only problem with living most of his life there. The other problem was that the people that made up his life were disappearing before his eyes.

Sammy had always known that that would happen eventually, of course. And he knew that his people were going to a better place, and that there was no way for them to live in a physical body again. Still, when someone he had known was there one day and gone from him the next, he couldn’t help but think of it as their death. Like people he knew were dying on a regular, steady basis and the studio just kept getting emptier.

Alice was the only one he could talk to about that. He didn’t even want Susie to know about it. So, when his memories of some ascended lost one were keeping him up at night, he’d leave and head for somewhere where no one could bother him. Oftentimes to his old sanctuary. From his time in captivity, he was used to hearing lost ones cry at night. He was even used to being one of them.

Susie noticed that Sammy’s mood had taken a turn, and was even aware of him leaving at night, but she didn’t know what to do about it. He denied that it was even happening, until a particular event pushed her to act.

It had all started when Sammy had come to Alice and Tom’s place, as he had many times before, only to be greeted by a strange, sketchy, black-and-white man. The man was tall, burly, and completely unsurprised by Sammy’s shock. “Like my new look? Oh calm down, Sammy. It’s Tom. Come in.”

“How…?”

“You see, Sammy,” Alice explained, “I decided to get one of the harder cases over with. The searcher that you’d isolated in that cage because she’d gone entirely insane. Well, after a few hours I realized that there was no fixing her. I should have known. She couldn’t even even speak, the poor thing. So I did what I did for Norman’s soul and just blanked it out and let Tom use it to change form. Boris here might be fine as a mute dog, but Tom isn’t!”

“Oh. Uh, congratulations, Tom. You look great!” Sammy replied, though he was much more concerned with his favourite blob with a hat. “She was so insane she couldn’t talk, you say?”

“Oh, Sammy. I promise you that Jack is going to be fine. I don’t know why he’s always stayed a searcher, but you know that none of them can talk. His soul seems pretty normal from what I can see.” From the corner where he was stroking Boris the wolf, Jack nodded in agreement.

“Alright, good to hear,” Sammy had said. That night, though, he laid awake, pondering his friend’s mortality, and the promise he’d made to his church to do everything in his power to save them. And it just seemed so unfair that he should get to live, just because he happened to have kept a bit of his own hair.

Sammy sat up in bed. That was it. The only way to bring him back was to get some physical remains of his. If that tiny, inky bundle of hair was enough for Bendy to do his magic, then anything ought to do.

Sammy retrieved a phone book from the drawer, taking a glance at the clock, which read 2:36. This was insane, and Sammy knew it was insane. Nonetheless, he flipped through the pages until he came upon the name “Fain.” It made most sense to just start at the top of the list and work his way down. He dialed the first number, the noise painfully loud against the silence of the night.

“Hello,” came a sleepy, female voice. Sammy had to wonder what he’d been thinking, doing this at this hour. Yet, it felt too late to back out now.

“Yes, hello. Do you have a relative named Jack Fain?”

“Uh, let me think… yeah. An uncle, I think.”

“Is he dead?”

“What?

“Sorry, I mean, uh…”

“Who is this?”

There was a silence.

“I’m hanging up-“

“Wait! I’m a geneticist from uh, New York University! We have reason to believe that he had a rare but harmless genetic abnormality that we’d like to study. Do you have anything that might have his DNA?”

“Oh, okay. I’m sorry, no. You might have a better chance with one of his adoptive kids, but I doubt anyone has anything. He went missing a long time ago. Can I give you one of their numbers?”

“I’d love that.”

Within the next ten minutes, Sammy had been on the line with all three of Jack’s adoptive kids, and was no closer to securing Jack’s DNA. He hung the phone back up and slumped to the floor, defeated and ready to cry. His sheep might be going to a better place, but he was still losing them, and he wasn’t sure how much more he could take. Susie and Sammy’s brother watched in silence from the hall. Susie beckoned his brother over.

“What should we do?” she whispered.

“I don’t think we can get through to him,” he replied.

“I think I know someone who can.”

Susie left the man’s side and left for the entrance to the sketch dimension. Even just poking her head through the door and seeing the sepia-toned studio on the other side made her heart pick up the pace. Slowly, she forced herself in, and pulled the door shut behind her. She checked it to make sure that it was in fact unlocked. Alright, she could do this. She’d done it before-done it for years. And it wasn’t as though the ink demon was here this time.

“Relentless forward momentum, Susie. Just do it, and don’t look back.”

Susie made her way through the studio, found an axe, slaughtered a few butcher gang trios, and found the elevator.

Relentless forward momentum. Don’t think, just do. There were plenty of artifacts of her past to trigger her memories, but she refused to take any of it in.

After a trip through Bendyland, she came to an ink river and stopped dead. Allison would be on the other side of this. Come on. Relentless forward momentum. It’s not gonna melt you. After some serious hesitation, Susie got in, waded through as quickly as she could, and found herself at Alice’s door. She gave it a few hard knocks.

“Who is it…?” Alice asked sleepily.

“It’s Susie Campbell.”

Confused, Alice got up and opened the door. Sure enough, Susie was there. “Susie! What brings you here?”

“It’s about Sammy. He’s not adjusting to the real world and I don’t think he would listen to anyone else. I want to give him an intervention, but could use you to soften him up. What do you say?”

Alice hesitated. Susie was getting desperate. “This is the last time he’ll ever get to spend with these people, Susie. I’ve seen into his soul, and you have no idea how much his people matter to him and how good his time here was. Have you ever considered just letting him grieve?”

Tears pricked at Susie’s eyes. “I wish I could see how he’s grown. But all he wants to do is come here. And talk about here. And I don’t wanna ever think about here again. All the ways I was hurt, and hurt other people… I just wanna forget it all and he won’t let me. Alice, if nothing happens, I’m going to have to leave him for my own sake so that I can move on. And I’m worried about how he’ll take that. He’s already crying almost every night, and tonight he was lying to people on the phone and acting like a fool in the middle of the night because he doesn’t want to lose Jack. I don’t wanna put a break up on him on top of that. What should I do, Alice?”

Alice looked to Susie with pity. At this point tears were flowing down the smaller woman’s face. “I guess you should at least warn him,” she sighed. “About the breakup, that is. I guess I can try talking to him. I’m biased, Susie. I don’t know what there is to value out there. I only know about in here. But I’ll try.”

“Okay,” Susie choked out.

“Can I walk you to the elevator? You look like you swam here.”

“There’s an elevator?”

“Yep. The lost ones made it.”

That explained why Susie didn’t know about it. Why would the lost ones share their knowledge with a monstress who wanted to vivisect them for their hearts? But, Susie didn’t have to think about that. A few minutes, and she’d be out of this inky hell.

—-

Sammy was overjoyed that Susie was finally allowing him to bring Allison and Tom out of the sketch dimension. He had something very important to tell them. After, of course, showing them around a little.

Allison in particular was awestruck as they walked downtown together. “There’s so much colour. Oh my gosh, what’s this one called?” Allison asked, pointing to a woman’s dress.

“Indigo. And the belt’s colour is called red,” Sammy said. Showing Allison around like this made him feel like a hero. Suddenly, Allison tore off to a cart selling flowers. By the time he’d caught up with her, she was face-deep in them.

“Oh, Sammy… you told me there were a lot of different kinds of these things, but… I never thought there would be this many.”

“Wanna buy some?”

If it were possible, Alice’s face lit up even more. Sammy bought her some small indigo flowers.

Soon, they were at the park they’d intended to go to. “So,” Alice began, voice somber, “I have something to tell you.”

“Really? Me, too.”

“You first.”

“Okay. So, I know you don’t really know yet what you’re going to do once you’re on the outside, and I’ve been thinking that you and Bendy could make a great team for curing mental illnesses like schizophrenia or dementia. Just kill them, manipulate the soul, and have Bendy bring them back to life. Easy, and it would probably bring in a lot of money.”

Alice looked at him like he was crazy. “Don’t the people out here have more reservations about death than us?”

“Oh, right. But, they also have reservations about torturing themselves with mental illness. I think a lot of people would still take it.”

“I don’t know, Sammy. I kind of want to find out who I am when I’m not killing people and manipulating souls. I don’t expect you to get it, but choosing who someone is supposed to be without their input is stressful. I’m not sure I can even do anything about dementia- it’s more a physical thing. And just… look around,” Allison gestured at the park. “It’s beautiful. Tom and I want to come out here and try something new. Anyhow, do you know if Bendy would be up to it?”

Sammy looked pensively to the grass. “No. Can I call him now?”

“Sure.”

So, that’s what Sammy did. Bendy picked up.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Bendy. It’s Sammy Lawrence.

“Hi, Sammy! To what do ah owe the honour?”

“This is… mostly hypothetical, but I was wondering if you’d be up to joining in a little project with Allison. It would involve moving across states to live with her, but I can imagine no greater use of your gifts.”

Bendy was silent a moment. Then, he heard Bendy call out, “Dad! It’s Sammy! He wants me to move in with Alice!”

“What?” Henry grunted before taking the phone and chasing Bendy off to play. “Sammy, hi! How are you adjusting to the real world?”

“Good…”

“Good. Now look, I’m sorry, but Bendy relocating now is not a good idea.”

Sammy was surprised with the strength of his reaction. “But why? You don’t even know what my plan is.”

“Because, Sammy,” Henry said patiently, “Bendy is a child. It doesn’t matter what the plan was. He needs his parental figures.”

“No he isn’t,” Sammy retorted, “He’s a powerful, 20-something-year-old demon that can control ink and raise the dead.”

“Yeah, but he spent several of those years locked and chained in an empty room, and spent the rest of them wandering around in a pocket dimension attempting to steal a soul. And right now, he wouldn’t want to be separated from me for two days, let alone to move to another state with Tom and Allison. Mentally, he’s just a child with abandonment issues. I don’t know what I’m going to do with him long-term, Sammy. Right now we’re going to try putting him in school. He’ll probably be ready for something like what you’re talking about one day. But right now, we honestly just want to move on.”

“Oh. Okay,” Sammy said. Then he hung up.

“What did he say?” Alice asked.

“They want to move on.”

Alice nodded. “That’s the thing I needed to tell you. Susie is worried about you. She thinks you have to move on.”

Sammy hid his head in his hands. A ton of thoughts, most of them nasty, brewed. He counted to ten and said, “Susie doesn’t realize how important my cult is to me. She doesn’t want to talk about anything.”

“She’s traumatized.”

Sammy strained to keep the anger out of his voice and the tears out of his eyes. “Why couldn’t you have just fixed that when you had the chance? It hurts us. You fixed that other guy.”

Alice sighed. “That’s different, Sammy. Depression is basically the brain not producing enough of a couple chemicals. To use the writing metaphor, it’s a matter of correcting a couple grammatical errors. With Susie, it would be like rewriting the plot, or deleting sentences. Susie’s trauma is about her memories, and her interpretation of them. Unless it were necessary, I couldn’t just… delete soul-deep memories. I could have planted thoughts in her head so that she wouldn’t be so affected by them, but after doing so much of that already for her identity issues and aggression, I just wanted to keep it low-interference wherever I could. And maybe that was a mistake. There isn’t a manual for this, y’know. I have to make choices and then live with them.”

“Oh. Okay,” Sammy replied, resigned. “If I can ask, what’s the biggest thing you did to me?”

“I made your thinking less black and white. That’s about it.”

“Okay.”

Sammy sat in silence a while, head on his knees. “What are you going to do when you can come out?” Sammy asked. “Who will you stay with?

“Presumably Tom and I will just live in the sketch dimension until we can afford a real place.”

“Okay. I was just thinking about letting the sketch dimension go for Susie’s sake. The thing is, I don’t want to leave you to learn about the world alone-“

Alice grabbed Sammy’s hand. His perfect, creamy white hand. This was someone pure. Someone who wouldn’t be stared at by every man woman and child out here. “Sammy. Look at yourself. You belong out here. With people. I wouldn’t want to hold you back.”

“You wouldn’t be. Alice, I’m not the person I was going into the sketch dimension, and I wouldn’t want to be. I want to discover who I am now and how I could fit in to this world, too. That’s what Susie doesn’t seem to get- even when my cult is gone, I don’t want things to go back to the way they were. We could figure out our new lives together. Tom, too.”

Alice would have blushed if she were physically capable of it. She also laughed a little, which confused Sammy. “What?”

“Oh, nothing. It just that I was supposed to get you to see the light and leave the sketch dimension behind. It seems like I’ve done pretty much the opposite. I’m gonna warn you, though: Susie and your brother are waiting for you to come back to the apartment so they can do a little intervention for you.”

The two came back to the apartment together, where Susie and Sammy’s brother were waiting. They had a serious talk together about what Sammy could be doing to handle loss better, and Sammy listened. He also explained his side of the story and what he’d planned with Allison. Susie was devastated, but also relieved when she and Sammy broke up. After the intervention was finished, Susie called her sister, and was moved out within a week.

—-

It was a little over a year later, and Sammy was rowing across a lake with Allison and Tom, where they planned on having a picnic to celebrate the anniversary of Tom and Alice’s entry into the real world. Sammy was happy that he’d chosen to be a part of it.

had found their place in a little town that housed the greatest hospice in New York State. The people out here had gotten used to having two sketchy, black and white people around. It had taken time, though. Sammy had gotten a job at the hospice fairly easily, but it took him a while to convince his boss to give Allison a chance. It had turned out to be a good place for them both to use their skills, including ones Sammy had developed during his time as an ink creature. It was far from a secular hospice, so Sammy could even use spirituality to comfort some of the patients. Alice occasionally took a soul home and fixed it up enough to land it in heaven, which she found to be a good balance between using her power and being more than it. Tom was also happy working as a lumberjack. Even aside from work though, it was a nice town, though- small, tight-knit, out in nature, had a nice church.

Not all of their transition was easy. It was very hard for Tom and Allison to discover that just because they’d been together when their were no other options, didn’t mean that their love would survive once they were free to make other choices. Alice and Sammy had had feelings for each other on some level since the moment they’d met, and became a couple pretty much the second that they were both single at the same time. The trio remained friends, though, with Tom living fairly close by and visiting often.

Sammy had readjusted some of his unused music for the modern age and had released them to some success. Susie had called him to congratulate him as soon as she saw a record with his name on it for sale. They exchanged stories about how they were doing. Susie was doing well. She was back in voice acting and was getting fairly good roles, and she was engaged now. That had been a couple months ago, and they hadn’t talked since. That was okay. Sammy had moved on. At their own pace, everyone had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you guys think Sammy made the right choice? When I started writing this, I was thinking I’d end it with Sammy giving the portal to the sketch dimension to Henry, forcing himself to move on, and eventually marrying Susie.


End file.
